Stephen A. Smith, is a lot better than we expected. While Smith still acts like a know-it-all, he does allow his guests to speak, and they often offer gems.

Still, that’s no reason to repackage whatever happens on the show as a news item. We’ve seen this at least twice on ESPNEWS.

Once, ESPNEWS had a segment showing Gary Sheffield’s appearance on Quite Frankly. On the show, Sheffield reversed his New York magazine stance and said Derek Jeter was the true leader of the Yankees. Problem was, he already did that to the writing press the day the story came out.

Worse, ESPNEWS showed a clip of Andy Van Slyke’s appearance on Quite Frankly. Van Slyke, a former teammate of Barry Bonds, said that while he never saw Bonds take steroids, he was pretty sure that he did. That’s news? Most of the baseball-watching population thinks he took steroids. But they, too, never actually saw him do it.

This was a clear case of crosspromotion, not hard news. Quite frankly, you know what the Memo thinks. Keep your shows out of the news.